• In Georgia, Rep. Jack Kingston and businessman David Perdue advanced to a July 22 runoff in the Republican Senate primary, eliminating a trio of challengers including Karen Handel, who had been endorsed by tea party favorite Sarah Palin.

"Republican primary voters are speaking out and making clear that they don't want professional tea party groups hijacking primaries and picking their candidates," Republican strategist Brian Walsh told the Journal. "Those days are over."

According to a CBS News poll released Wednesday, just 15 percent of Americans say they support the tea party — the lowest total since February 2010, and down from a high of 31 percent following the November 2010 midterms.

One reason for the drop-off: Republicans themselves. Just 32 percent of Republicans polled said they support the tea party, down 10 points from February. In July 2010, 55 percent of GOP voters said they supported the movement.

"That’s not to say that the GOP has experienced any shift to the political center," WSJ's Rebecca Ballhaus wrote, "nor does this mark a return to a pre-tea party era, in which compromising with Democrats wasn’t deemed so suspicious."

And tea party members say they are having long-term impact.

"We sometimes lose battles, but we are winning the war," Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, told the newspaper. "They are all running on our issues."

Still, some observers believe Tuesday's losses may dissuade the tea party from lending its support to the remaining GOP candidates, like McConnell.

"I suspect the tea party may prove to be sore losers," Ernest Yanarella, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky, told the USA Today. "They could very well just sit out the Senate election itself, and that would certainly be bad news for him."